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Trade channel bug(?)

So for some reason, if you try to post the phrase "black steel key" in Trade channel, it will not appear to other players. This can be bypassed like so, but why is this happening in the first place?

I want to believe that this is a bug, but I am aware that GMs have been throwing out blanket bans to whomever buys Black Steel Keys or other store items from people who have exploited the payment system to obtain LOTRO Points. Even people who unknowingly buy any store item from these payment scammers (it is nearly impossible to differentiate a legitimate advertisement from an illegitimate one), even if it is for in-game gold via Trade or World channel, will also get banned along with the original exploiter. Several people in my kinship and my friends have received 7 day, 14 day, 30 day, and even permanent bans because of this and there was no way for them to know that they had bought illicitly obtained items in Trade channel. They have appealed the bans but those tickets were closed, customer service simply giving the blanket statement:

"The Code of Conduct clearly states,

"... 11. You may not advertise the intent to, commit the act of, or facilitate the ability of others to commit the act of unauthorized selling or buying of Game items for real-world monetary values or other consideration."

We sincerely appreciate and value the commitment every player in our community makes to the game, but actions that egregiously violate the Terms of Service cannot be tolerated. This account is permanently banned and unrecoverable.

Thank you"

This statement makes no sense, especially when the player who made the ticket only purchased items for in-game currency and no transaction using real world currency was made with an unauthorized seller. This ends up causing players to quit the game because they lost their account for a ridiculous reason.

So, given these events, I have reason to believe that this is just another measure to prevent players from buying/selling certain items because you cannot stop a handful of payment scammers. This whole ordeal just makes the entire endgame grind even more painful than it already is. 20 Black Steel Keys get you about 8000 ash, depending on your RNG. 8000 ash is like nothing compared to the tens of thousands of ash required to gear out several alts. How do you expect players to actually play at the endgame if you just ban random people who buy keys for gold?

A mate and me had the same Problem. My mate got 1 week banned for buying an Aria of the Valar on world chat and I got banned for buying black keys in world chat for 200g each. It's pretty ridiculous to ban people without having proper evidence of them exploiting / buying stuff outside world chat/store. Heard the same happening to other people aswell.

you ban someone who bought a key - word spreads - everyone stops buying black keys or anything from store in fear of getting banned - LEGIT sellers stop buying in the store because no buyers - exploited items are still on the world market because exploiters dont give a damn

SSG, just remove option to send instore items for mithril.
You are clearly don't know how to handle or fix this situation. It is just chaos happening in game at the moment.
And instead of fixing/paying attention to the real problems you just wasting your time for something you aren't able to handle.

We also have another guess: are you trying to shutdown a game by banning everyone ? Would make sense actually.

I have seen this happened to plenty of my friends also, and it's at this point really scary. I had to stop myself from buying keys from world/trade because I am affraid I am getting a ban with 0% chance of appealing because the GM banning is the same one Reviewing the ban, how on earth is this fair? Ban cases should be reviewed by a total different team than the ones applying the bans, otherwise Bias comes into play.

It makes no sense to me that you are punishing players that buy with In-game gold from world/trade channel, how are we supposed to know if the item was bought legitemately or not? This started to happen around 3 months ago, I got really scared that I decided to take a 2 month break, hoping they would stop this non-sense, but I came back 3 weeks ago and it's even worse now.

We need explanations or a safe way to buy in-game w/o getting a ban the very next day for playing the game; and no, buying exploited stuff doesn't violate #11 ToS, since players are not using real cash to buy it. Im not saying u make it legal to buy exploited stuff, what I want is for you to fix that exploit and stop punishing your playerbase for something u can't fix.

instead of trying to solve the problems you just banning people because they bought keys on world chats with in game gold. instead of trying to fix the spammers and filter their sites you filter the <<black steel keys>>. good job ssg. the problem is the army of gold spammers. way to solve this is to not accepting multi accounts. but no this is making money to you. instead of this you banning people. always same situations. making fiddles and making updates for fiddles when there the game is broken atm. pvp and pve..

Banning people for doing something they allowed us to do via making store items able to send through mail to other people using mithril........ I'm confused, do they want people to play their game/ give them money or not? I don't think Lotro can afford to hemorrhage many more players at this point.

1.SSG promotes fascism by censoring words.
2.SSG promotes communism by banning people for committing normal free market action like trading, buying, selling goods. They bought them, they can do with them whatever they want.
3.SSG does everything to make this game being closer to shutdown by banning people that spend money in the store. Do you have idea how much my friends spent money for those keys? Much.
4.I am not sure why you just won't tell raiders to leave the game, because you care only about casuals. Where is 115 scaled Rift you promised?

you guys like to live dangerously, they ban people for buying things with gold what do you think they will do to you when they see themselves being criticized on forums. cancel delete thread and mass ban anyone who said something they don't like

I have seen this happened to plenty of my friends also, and it's at this point really scary. I had to stop myself from buying keys from world/trade because I am affraid I am getting a ban with 0% chance of appealing because the GM banning is the same one Reviewing the ban, how on earth is this fair? Ban cases should be reviewed by a total different team than the ones applying the bans, otherwise Bias comes into play.

Completely redundant process, not to mention an abuse of power. Literally 1 person has the power to decide if you can play game or not and you cannot explain your case if it happens. If you are lucky enough to even get an email on why you are banned. There is no impartialness to the process and your financial and time investment ingame is at the mercy of a single person who if they ban you will doubtfully have a change of heart on the same case they banned. This is a poor and not to mention extremely unethical business practice in customer service

OML ssg this is huge. You need to take in how massive whats happening here is. To make you pay more attention ima put this in all caps lock:
YOUR HARDCORE PLAYER BASE IS ALREADY COMPLAINING ABOUT LACK OF INSTANCE CONTENT, NOW UR HITTING US WITH THIS? ARE U MAD?
This is the perfect time to completly reform ur ban system because its complete garbage. Take this seriosuly, people have spent 11 years building their account and yall out here giving out perma bans like theyre fiddles! Not only is the ban system terrible but the ban appeal system is 1000x worse. Example: 7 months ago i got banned for a week, i dont even remember what the ban was, i appealed the ban and im still waiting for a response.
But yall aint gonna listen, yall are working too hard on ur spring festival encore

After browsing through the forums for the first time in a long while, it genuinely appears to me that this is a consistent pattern in SSG's business practice that ultimately seems to lead to the intentional disengagement from customers. "Cash cow and cash out" if you will. It legitimately seems as though the company is attempting to downsize player engagement for a means to an end I cannot possibly comprehend? (Other than the obvious: They want the project to end indefinitely.) I am bewildered that a (loosely used) "new" development company, SSG, would go through such painful measures to keep the licensing and all of the gut-work to keep LOTRO breathing after they acquired the property only to immidiately treat the property with complete disdain and what appears to be willful ignorance towards problems. A business that puts so much effort into reviving a project on the brink (kind-of), as SSG did, and has no ultimate goal to improve the "quality of life" facets of the game that will retain a healthy player base and a healthy game only leads me to the conclusion that they are either intentionally crashing the game for that last stretch of LOTRO Points paycheck, are entirely incompetent in their full chain of command, or simply have run the metrics that (for the sake of arguement lets say 1%/99%) 1% of the gamebase are providing 99% of revenue and do not feel inclined to provide decent support as there is no motivation if "whales" are willing to provide them with an easy paycheck when the state of the game is where it is currently and no real work needs to be done for their earnings.

TLDR; It appears that the development crew are no longer in it for the love of the IP, rather, they appear to know the IP's worth in micro-transactions (and the demographic feeding them that supply) and are milking every last coin they can out of it with minimal effort towards the property it's self.

Either way, I am really saddened to hear this.
(Just for clarity, I no longer play, so take my opinion at it's worth, which is very little.)

Completely redundant process, not to mention an abuse of power. Literally 1 person has the power to decide if you can play game or not and you cannot explain your case if it happens. If you are lucky enough to even get an email on why you are banned. There is no impartialness to the process and your financial and time investment ingame is at the mercy of a single person who if they ban you will doubtfully have a change of heart on the same case they banned. This is a poor and not to mention extremely unethical business practice in customer service

Yes, Impartiality has to be present on ban appeals, and it can not exist when the person banning you is the same in charge of judging the validity of such ban.

How exactly do you buy a key from another player with real money ? And why wouldn't that be a TOS ?

I want to believe that this is a bug, but I am aware that GMs have been throwing out blanket bans to whomever buys Black Steel Keys or other store items from people who have exploited the payment system to obtain LOTRO Points. Even people who unknowingly buy any store item from these payment scammers (it is nearly impossible to differentiate a legitimate advertisement from an illegitimate one), even if it is for in-game gold via Trade or World channel, will also get banned along with the original exploiter. Several people in my kinship and my friends have received 7 day, 14 day, 30 day, and even permanent bans because of this and there was no way for them to know that they had bought illicitly obtained items in Trade channel. They have appealed the bans but those tickets were closed, customer service simply giving the blanket statement: